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Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

reuters.com

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Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#281

Post by skhunted »

reaperman wrote: post #256
skhunted wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the part of the brian that deals with impulse control isn’t fully developed until early 20s. We don’t willingly and willfully let kids have access to alcohol and heroin. By your reasoning it seems like we should so that they can learn self control.

I mean a lot of Europe has fairly low age limits for purchasing alcohol, and even lower for drinking it in private. I believe 16-year olds can still buy wine and beer at the grocery stores in Denmark. I’ve heard it’s fairly common for 14-year olds to drink at home in the UK - though the 14-to-16 range may be delaying on average since ~2010. I don’t believe many countries allow adults access to heroin. I believe prohi…

We agree then that limiting access to alcohol is appropriate at some age level. Different countries do it at different ages. What is optimal is society dependent.

I gather then that we are in agreement that limiting access to social media is appropriate at some age level. We perhaps disagree at what age that ought to occur.

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#282

Post by skhunted »

dotnet00 wrote: post #239
skhunted wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We agree that giving kids access to heroin as a way to teach self control is idiotic. What we don't agree on is that social media in its current incarnation is heroin like. I think it is. ..heroin was the primary means of social interaction for the majority of adults.. We aren't talking about adults we are talking about kids. That the majority of adults use social media for social interaction is a separate problem an…

You're forgetting that my argument is that by pushing the age of access to social media up to 18 (as the person I replied to proposed), we'd be pushing teaching social media 'literacy' to when parents lose the tools they have to teach their kids. If an 18 year old gets debilitatingly addicted to social media, the most they can do is threaten to kick them out, which I'm sure you can agree isn't really a solution, but…

… we'd be pushing teaching social media 'literacy' to when parents lose the tools they have to teach their kids.

There are ways of teaching said literacy without allowing unrestricted access to social media. Your last paragraph suggest one such way.

It’s not an all or nothing type situation. I think it’s clear the essence of what is being discussed with the Florida law is that kids shouldn’t be granted unrestricted access to social media and those companies should be required to enforce access rules to people under a certain age.

I believe we are in agreement on this.

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#283

Post by toyg »

bequanna wrote: post #181
toyg wrote: post #151

It was already de-facto illegal for people under 13 to have social accounts. Do you know any kids younger than that on social media? I do. This is the equivalent of paper bags for beer cans - it will do nothing to fix the problem, but it will make children slightly more secretive about their internet usage, which will make some situations (grooming, bullying) even worse.

> Do you know any kids younger than that on social media? I do. That isn't really how laws work. You don't say: "Driving under the influence is illegal, but I totally know people who drink and drive so the law is useless". A solution doesn't need to be 100% effective for it to be hugely beneficial to society.

The point is that the pre-existing law was already completely ineffective. This one will be no better.

One can restrict consuming a resource only if one has means to police such restrictions. Unless you agree to draconian measures, like having all browsers under police control at all times, there is no real way to police web access by age.

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#284

Post by Clubber »

singleshot_ wrote: post #272
everforward wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't reply to the other responder, but even if these are shopping malls... Those are already acknowledged as common spaces at least in California where most of them are headquartered. Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins, it was held that a shopping mall was not allowed to remove students asking for signatures on a motion.

PruneYards was found not to be significantly harmed by the expressive activity, because the goal of the commercial activity is to sell stuff. But the goal of an online social media platform is to curate a coherent speech product, and allowing people to insert themselves unwanted into that product is a very significant imposition on the platform. Also no one lives or eats or breathes on Twitter so the notion that they…

>PruneYards was found not to be significantly harmed by the expressive activity, because the goal of the commercial activity is to sell stuff. But the goal of an online social media platform is to curate a coherent speech product, and allowing people to insert themselves unwanted into that product is a very significant imposition on the platform.

That is true but unrelated to the DeSantis law. The social media companies obviously don't want to kick kids off their platform considering they are a significant portion of their audience.

The DeSantis law states the government is mandating that social media companies ID everybody. This does have precedent though because governments require bars and food marts to ID young people for cigarettes, but it's different because they are not required to ID everybody. I'm not sure they are even required to ID people, they can just be prosecuted for selling cigarettes and alcohol to minors. I think the ID part was just the most convenient way to not get prosecuted.

Of course requiring social media companies to ID everybody will have a massive chilling effect on political discourse. That might be part of the objective or at least a convenient side effect.

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#285

Post by II2II »

dotnet00 wrote: post #65
II2II wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps that is part of the problem with these laws: we are playing a game of whack-a-mole instead of tackling the issue of mental health. While I personally avoid social media due to privacy concerns, I have encountered other adults my age who have expressed that they avoid social media for reasons related to mental health. While walking through my neighbourhood, it is clear that there are many people with mental he…

You are literally posting to social media right now.

Perhaps it is because I put a heavier emphasis on the word media, but I don't really classify HN as a social media site. It's more of a forum where people discuss submitted articles. The dynamics are entirely different.

For one thing, there is a lot less "attention seeking" behaviour. While YCombinator and associated companies use it as a promotional tool, it is muted. Some end users may use it to drive traffic to their blogs or show off their skills, but it usually comes off as humble and related to common interests (or maybe the blatant self-promoters rarely make it to the front page). Even though some of the people who frequent (or pop in) here are more recognizable, I doubt that anyone is trying to win a popularity contest.

I think stuff like that is important when considering the psychological impact of a site. For good or for ill, reality is reality. In contrast, social media sites tend to be driven by fantasy: fame and fortune for creators, endless exponential growth for investors, and all of that nonsense. That distortion of reality can be damaging for those who either seek to achieve it and for those who feel they will never measure up.

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#286

Post by jjav »

oglop wrote: post #240
Buttons840 wrote: post #231

The recent World Happiness Report[0] concluded: > In many but not all regions, the young are happier than the old. But in North America happiness has fallen so sharply for the young that they are now less happy than the old. By contrast, in the transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the young are much happier than the old. In Western Europe as a whole happiness is similar at all ages, while elsewhere it…

Interesting young populations bordering all too real conflicts and war and existentially threatening neighbors are happier than people who have, by comparison, so much less to be unhappy about. Also the old are very rich in America. They hold stocks and do well. I’m a millennial and can’t say I’ve had that experience. I would bet old Europeans own less securities and are less wealthy possibly. This decreases the olde…

> Also the old are very rich in America. They hold stocks and do well.

That is quite a generalization. The rich old people are indeed very rich.

Also, a lot of old people are quite poor and poverty is increasing in that age bracket.

https://www.ncoa.org/article/latest-census-bureau-data-shows...

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#287

Post by tristan957 »

oliwarner wrote: post #245
scarface_74 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last thing we need is to force everyone to have ID to “protect the children” before I can go on to a site on the internet.

Which is not what anyone is calling for.

Pornhub just blocked Texas. We are very much using children as an excuse for big government.

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#288

Post by ericmcer »

psadauskas wrote: post #241
ericmcer wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a 14 year old and the content of social media seems to be what bums her out. She seems to be ingrained with the idea that she will never own a home, environmental disasters will be constant and the economy will be in shambles by the time she reaches adulthood. Maybe America just has a uniquely depressive social media environment? I have not read any kind of large scale studies examining the "tone" of social me…

> she will be able to buy a house if she wants one, the economy will always be good for people who are work smart and hard, etc. Yeah, I don't think that's true at all. Its just anecdata, but I have several friends in their 30s for which that's just not the case. They're smart and work (harder than I do, just not in tech), but the price of a down payment on a home is going up faster than they're able to save, and the…

You are totally right housing prices have skyrocketed relative to wages, but you cant just tell kids they are doomed. There have always been good times and hard times and there are always people who succeed or fail regardless.

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#289

Post by mike_hearn »

msluyter wrote: post #264
mike_hearn wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's risky to describe the claims of social studies profs as clear empirical evidence, given the history of the field. Twenge makes some unscientific arguments in her blog post, like constantly conflating correlation with causation despite her evidence not being able to show that. She also seems to think that if she knocks down a series of counter-arguments, then that means that her own argument must be correct. Give…

It definitely appears much worse for girls, but afaict, depression has risen in boys as well, just by not as much. See graphs here: [1] So if social medial is harmful in general, I don't view prohibiting it a "punishment" for boys; perhaps like less of a benefit? Regarding your second point, I imagine the data would provide some clues. If the kids that are now teens were always more depressed, I'd imagine that we'd s…

But the rise in depression is only amongst some people, not everyone uniformly. Yet nearly ~all teenagers use the internet and something that can be described as social media. So it'd be punishing the majority who can use something responsibly and even get enjoyment and benefit from it, for the lack of self control of a minority (who could easily just log off but won't).

All that assumes the link actually holds, indeed. The two articles in Reason are persuasive that it doesn't hold though. The social media discussion in that case is just a distraction that stops people figuring out the real causes.

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#290

Post by KaiserPro »

singleshot_ wrote: post #280
KaiserPro wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did too, but I would gently point out that you had to actively look for it. something rotten was a known site for that kinda stuff. You only went there if you were doing "illicit browsing" shall we say. It was pretty difficult to stumble over a video of something visceral. Moreover, the internet wasn't real when we grew up. The internet is real and omnipresent, filled with the mountains of clickbated bullshit, and…

SomethingAwful.com and rotten.com were two separate sites, as a historical note.

sorry yes, thank you for the correction.
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